University of Oxford

Thursday is William Shakespeare's 451st birthday and the 399th anniversary of his passing -- April 23 being the generally accepted date of the Bard's birth in 1564 and his death in 1616. Thus does 2015 fall between the cracks in the Shakespearean calendar. Still, there's no reason not to honor Shakespeare in any year. I'm doing so in two ways. One is by reading Garry Wills' 2014 book "Making Make-Believe Real," his fascinating study of "Politics as Theater in Shakespeare's Time." Wills' goal is to take down by a notch some recently popular Shakespeare scholars, like Stephen...

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